Faces of the Past that Haunt My Future
by The Princess of Pain
Summary: Albus Dumbledore puts the Resurrection Ring on, and doesn't take it off, instead keeping it on to make peace with his ghosts until his demise. Includes Grindelwald/Dumbledore.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, J.K Rowling does. On with the story!

The resurrection ring sat in front of him, glittering in the moonlight. It had taken Albus a good hour to take all the curses off it, and now it just sat there, looking like an ordinary ring. But it wasn't ordinary. With the ring he could see them again. Gellert and Ariana, the two people who mattered most to him.

He reached out with a wrinkle-covered hand and picked the ring up. The black stone glittered, and he slid the golden band on his finger. Searing pain laced up his arm immediately, and it hurt, worse than anything he ever thought could. He grasped for his wand and was about to apparate when he caught sight of her. Ariana stood in front of him, her blonde hair blowing around her. She saw him staring at her and smiled in that vacant way she always had before her death. A scoff echoed around the tiny shack and Albus automatically turned and felt his heart skip a beat. With his arms crossed over his chest a young Gellert Grindlewald stood, leaning against the side of the shack. Albus' grip tightened around his wand and with tears in his eyes he apparated, pain racking through his body.

He landed in Hog's Mead with a thump. He heard snickering behind him and didn't dare turn around, seeing Ariana's pale face out of the corner of his eye. He made his way to the castle, the ghosts of his past following him silently. He summoned his Patronus with a flick of his wrist and managed to send for Severus before collapsing in his chair, Gellert's voice ringing from behind him, "Oh how the mighty have fallen, Albus! And now you're cursed! You idiot!"

Albus tuned him out and laid his head on his desk as Gellert continued to yell at him. He must have fallen asleep because he was awoken by Severus shaking him, "Albus! Don't you dare be dead!" He yelled. Albus moved his head up and laughed bitterly in the other man's surprised face.

"Not yet, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, Severus. I shouldn't have touched it." He whispered, showing Severus the ring. The flesh around It was blackened and Albus couldn't even feel it. Ariana moved into his view and tried to grab his hand, only for it to go through. She let out a mournful wail and started to cry, moving into a corner. Albus stood up, not hearing Severus as he moved to the dead girl's side. He knelt by her side and tried to touch her hair.

"It's okay, Ari. Please stop crying. I'm not dead yet." Albus said, trying to stop her from crying. She looked up at him with those blue eyes and he wished not for the first time that he had never met Gellert, and that he had never resented taking care of her. She was just a child, so young and he had taken her life away from her. She reached out and tried to press her hand against his face, starting to cry again when it went through. He was jerked back, and for a crazy second thought it was Gellert who grabbed him. But no, Severus stood in front of him reaching out to pull the ring off. Albus pushed him away, not wanting the curse to affect the closest thing he had to a son, and also not wanting to get rid of the phantoms of Ariana and **Him**.

"Please don't, Severus. They need me, she needs me." He whispered to Severus over Ari's cries. Severus looked at him with those fathomless eyes and nodded, before moving him back to his chair. After a while Ariana stopped crying, and Albus saw Gellert had reached out to her and cradled her. After Severus left to get a potion to help him, he turned to the two. Gellert spoke without prompting.

"She thinks I'm Aberforth. The faces get mixed-up in her head, and it has been so long that she forgets. Sometimes she's coherent and tells me she misses you two and your parents. She rarely speaks. I think she stayed behind to wait for you and your insipid brother. Why did you not tell me she was an Obscuri?" Gellert asked him, moving a piece of hair off of his sister's pale face. Albus felt old, older than ever and he wanted nothing more than to reach out and run his hands through the specter's blonde hair and caress the face he had missed so much. His hands clenched and dug into the wood of his desk.

"You would have used her, the same way you used me." He whispered, his eyes no longer sparkling as he no longer felt like the most powerful Wizard alive, but instead an old man who had lived far too long.

 **{{Line Break}}**

Harry looks at his hand in horror and Albus quickly covers it, makes sure he can't see the ring. He mustn't see the stone until it is time. Ariana wondered off and Albus didn't worry much, (In part because he knew nothing could happen to her since she was already dead.) but Gellert insisted on staying by his side at all times. Even as Harry sat at the Gryffindor table, the dead teenager's words rung in his ears.

"So, you've raised a sacrificial lamb then? Treated him like a son, before throwing him to the Dark Lord. Go to admit it is darker than I thought, especially for you. And here I thought you changed, became a beacon for the light. What. A. Fucking. Joke." Gellert said, sneering at the Boy-Who-Lived. Albus hummed a song he heard Ariana singing a few days ago and muttered a half-truth about getting something from his office before walking briskly down the hall. The second he got into his office he checked for Ariana (a habit that after 3 months with the two of them was now second nature) before turning to dead boy.

"Why do insist on torturing me, Grindlewald? I am trying to atone for my sins. The boy is a Horcrux. What else can I do? Everything I do is for the greater good." He asked the ghost, his head in his hands. Gellert studied him for a moment, then shrugged before reaching out towards Albus' hand. He tapped the ring and surprisingly made contact with it. The quiet sound rang through the silent office, and Albus flinched.

"Don't blame me for your choice to put on this retched ring, Albus. Just because you cling to the love we once had and are unable to accept it was your fault Ariana died. I took responsibility for the part I played in what happened to Ariana years ago. I told you once we could have been great. We could have prevented others like her being used. It was you who said no. It was you that took the wand from my hand and shot me down with the one that killed her. It was you who decided to raise me- raise us from the dead. And it was you who abandoned me all those years ago, not me. So, don't you act as though you are an innocent. Your hands are as blood soaked as mine." Gellert whispered, a malicious smile on his face, though his eyes shown with something akin to hurt. Albus pulled his hand away with a hiss, pain lancing up his arm.

"Why was my love not enough?" Albus asked him, his question not his, but instead from the boy he once was several years ago. Gellert looked at him with pity clear on his face, but did not answer. Albus left, not hearing his greatest foe and greatest love answer,

"You would have been, had I known then what my mistake would do to the both of us."

 **{{Line Break}}**

Albus' days blur together, Draco's botched murder attempts and Gellert's taunts blurring together in his mind as he attempts to leave something to help Harry once he is gone. His hand turns darker each day, and though the pain is never dulling he writes out his will, leaving everything to Harry and his friends (with the exception of an old summer house he owns in Liverpool. That and a large amount of gold and rare potion ingredients are for Severus once this wretched war is over, so he can be free from malicious masters and manipulative headmaster).

He finds the place of another Horcrux and takes Harry with him, to make him understand that this isn't a game. He finds it in a pool of Emerald potion and it takes too much time to convince Harry to let him drink it.

Memories unfold in his mind as he drinks, of Ariana the day after those boys hurt her, of his father being hauled away in chains, of his mother's dead body with Ariana crying over it, of Ariana running between three twin jets of green, of Gellert opening his arms to him, only to look at him with a sense of betrayal when a he whispers the curse that has followed him all throughout his life. The love of his life dies in his arms, and he screams. Hours, or days, maybe minutes later he comes back to himself, and restrains himself from drinking from the infiri filled lake. He apparates them away, the locket tucked into Harry's jacket as Ariana and Gellert follow them, silent for once.

They land in the astronomy tower, and Albus hears footsteps. He quickly stuns Harry before moving to the stairs, resigned but unsurprised to see Draco with his wand pointed at him. He talks him down and Severus steps forward.

He watches the end unfold before him, hating that the man who was essentially his son had to kill him, so another's soul would remain uncorrupted, hating that Harry had to witness this, had to watch the closest thing he had to a father die.

The potion weighed heavy in his stomach, and although his mouth was cleansed of the potion the memories lingered. He saw now that this ring was a blessing, not a curse. He had killed Ariana. He had helped Gellert down his dark path, helped destroy the one he loved. The ring had given them back. But he still deserved this. Seeing Severus hesitate as Bellatrix watched him like a hawk, he reached out to him and gave him a reassuring smile.

"Severus, please." He begged. Severus stared at him with dark eyes that were too wet for his liking before pointing his want at him.

"Avada Kedavra!" He shouted, and Albus saw nothing but green for a moment before his vision cleared to see Ariana smiling kindly at him.

"Albus. It's time to go." She whispered reaching out to him and his love reached out to, sadness and acceptance and love in his eyes, and he reached back as his body fell from the tower and to the ground. He grasped their hands and together the three of them ascended. And perhaps death was a great adventure for all of them, and perhaps Harry Potter went on to save the Wizarding World, but this my dear readers is where our story (Albus Dumbledore's story) ends.

 _A/N: First, let me apoligize. I can't make line breaks. If you know how to please. Tell me. Second, I know Grindlewald is still alive in Deathly Hallows, but in fanfiction anything can happen, so Gellert is dead and loved Albus but loved power more. I never saw Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them, hell I never read the book. But I know Harry Potter, and I know it was implied Grindlewald felt regret over his actions. So, I made Dumbledore see the two people he missed the most. Just imagine if the whole 6_ _th_ _book those two were there, the rambling mess of Ariana (No hate, love her to death, although I always see her as Elle Fanning for some reason) or the cynical Gellert (Also there is no reason he is not an old man, I just loved Jamie so much I saw him as Gellert, this sarcastic sulky dead gay teenager.) Before I hop off, did you guys like what I did with the Lemon Drops? Love you all (and please review, one review equals one-step closer to a story about a coward and how he came to be~)_

 _I spread, therefore I am,_

 _Pain_


End file.
